Some ideas seem awesome in the comfort of your office in the middle of summer like a 12 hour rogaine in the Waitakere Ranges with a mid night start. Thoughts like that's cool, a midnight start will be really neat, wow how adventurous, I can't wait to do that event ... etc etc.....
However, last Friday as I sat in the comfort of my office and looked out the window at torrential downpour after torrential downpour and gale force winds hurling debris across the viaduct the soft side of my personality said ... mmmmm maybe this is a bit too adventurous - maybe we should just flag it and stay indoors.... but that was a momentary fleeting thought before the stubborn staunch side of my personality said HTFU Debbie it IS going to be awesome ... bring it on yehah and all that ....
So at 11pm there we were (Cath, Anne and Me) at Bethels Beach huddled in the car out of the howling wind trying to work out our route choice for the next 12 hours. Midnight hit and off we went - we decided to head directly for the coast and got a bit of spray and surge up to our knees for our efforts to collect the coastal controls by running along Bethels and Oneils Beaches, then we climbed up on to the ridge line and got blasted by the winds as we travelled towards Goldies Bush along the TeHenga walkway. At some points we were completely blown off our feet - what a buzz - this track is sensational during the day but it is also magic at night with howling winds and the sound of crashing waves and pounding surf. Apart from a stop to change batteries we made steady progress along here and soon got to Goldies Bush where things quietened down and warmed up considerably as we were out of the wind. We headed up the stream to collect a few controls then back tracked to the bridge as we knew the stream was pretty hard going. Here we bumped into Hannah and Andrew who had taken a wrong turn and got a bit discombobulated. From Goldies Bush it was a massive road trek to the Cascades - we thought about a short cut down some driveways but after discussing the possiblity of being chased by Rottweilers or irate residents decide against it. We then headed up Long Road and took a track through to the bottom of the Cascades track - headed up onto Cascades and Robinson track - what a climb - it's funny how our memories block out the nasty climbs and lull you into a false sense of "yeah it's a climb but it's not that bad....What ever ! From here we headed down or should I say slopped and slipped our way to the Tramping hut, down RGB, Chateau Mossie, Pig stream and all those famous Waitaks names before deciding to drop two controls and bail down to Lake Wainamu and the massive sand dune. We stumbled a bit on our second to last control on the sanddune as we took a bearing but due to sand being driven into our eyes by the wind we couldn't see properly so headed off the bearing too far left and missed the control - luckily we had time to faff so scouted around and eventually found what we were looking for - we picked up our final control and made it to the finish line with 15 mins up our sleeve. What an awesome night out it was. We did 2187m of climb and covered 52.7km and finished in first place :)
However, last Friday as I sat in the comfort of my office and looked out the window at torrential downpour after torrential downpour and gale force winds hurling debris across the viaduct the soft side of my personality said ... mmmmm maybe this is a bit too adventurous - maybe we should just flag it and stay indoors.... but that was a momentary fleeting thought before the stubborn staunch side of my personality said HTFU Debbie it IS going to be awesome ... bring it on yehah and all that ....
So at 11pm there we were (Cath, Anne and Me) at Bethels Beach huddled in the car out of the howling wind trying to work out our route choice for the next 12 hours. Midnight hit and off we went - we decided to head directly for the coast and got a bit of spray and surge up to our knees for our efforts to collect the coastal controls by running along Bethels and Oneils Beaches, then we climbed up on to the ridge line and got blasted by the winds as we travelled towards Goldies Bush along the TeHenga walkway. At some points we were completely blown off our feet - what a buzz - this track is sensational during the day but it is also magic at night with howling winds and the sound of crashing waves and pounding surf. Apart from a stop to change batteries we made steady progress along here and soon got to Goldies Bush where things quietened down and warmed up considerably as we were out of the wind. We headed up the stream to collect a few controls then back tracked to the bridge as we knew the stream was pretty hard going. Here we bumped into Hannah and Andrew who had taken a wrong turn and got a bit discombobulated. From Goldies Bush it was a massive road trek to the Cascades - we thought about a short cut down some driveways but after discussing the possiblity of being chased by Rottweilers or irate residents decide against it. We then headed up Long Road and took a track through to the bottom of the Cascades track - headed up onto Cascades and Robinson track - what a climb - it's funny how our memories block out the nasty climbs and lull you into a false sense of "yeah it's a climb but it's not that bad....What ever ! From here we headed down or should I say slopped and slipped our way to the Tramping hut, down RGB, Chateau Mossie, Pig stream and all those famous Waitaks names before deciding to drop two controls and bail down to Lake Wainamu and the massive sand dune. We stumbled a bit on our second to last control on the sanddune as we took a bearing but due to sand being driven into our eyes by the wind we couldn't see properly so headed off the bearing too far left and missed the control - luckily we had time to faff so scouted around and eventually found what we were looking for - we picked up our final control and made it to the finish line with 15 mins up our sleeve. What an awesome night out it was. We did 2187m of climb and covered 52.7km and finished in first place :)
Awesome race report!
ReplyDelete-Alastair